Two Tainted Rings
by jeffysquint
Summary: The rings bounce against her chest as she leans forward, a silent yet heavy reminder of more than her thoughts can handle. She will never stop being thankful for the ending to this day, to the antidote that saved her fiancé so that she didn't have to carry two death-laiden rings around her neck for the rest of her life. No, just one is enough.


Not much to say. I wrote this too quick while I should have been doing other things. I needed a more emotional side to put my mind to rest. I feel like this happened a few hours after where the episode left off. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or this story.**

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The rings bounce against her chest as she leans forward, a silent yet heavy reminder of more than her thoughts can handle. She will never stop being thankful for the ending to this day, to the antidote that saved her fiancé so that she didn't have to carry two death-laiden rings around her neck for the rest of her life. No, just one is enough.

Her hand comes forward to brush the thick matted hair from his sticky forehead and back towards his hairline. The first time he woke up was peaceful, serene, and they shared quiet words before he drifted back under. The second time, however, he woke with a rolling stomach and spent the next thirty minutes over a blue plastic bowl.

The doctors say it is just residual from how close he came to the brink, but of course she's still on edge. He smiled at her softly when the woman in the white coat told them that they shouldn't be worried. It was his silent "See? I'm fine." It was his attempt to push the seeping worry from her mind. A few minutes later though, after he had drifted off once more, the worry returned. No matter what the monitor said, whenever he closed his eyes she once more saw him lying on the grass next to her car, white and pale and closer to death than that one time he dressed up like a zombie.

The images flitter past behind her eyes, and the deep breaths she's taking in are doing little to slow her rapidly accelerating heartbeat. So she takes his right hand in both of hers, threading her fingers into the spaces between his own. His hand is cold in hers, something she doesn't think that she has ever felt before. She cups it the best she can, but her thin fingers don't even begin to cover the expanse of the back of his hand, which she brings to her lips for a shaky kiss.

One hand in his, the other at the short hairs behind his neck, she begins to breathe warm air into his palm, a desperate attempt to make his hand feel more like home to hers. When she realizes the futility of her attempts, it near breaks her. He still looks so white to her, without the hint of rosy tint to his cheeks that he gets when he knows how sappy he's being.

His words when he woke the first time, words of reassurance and love, blanketed her in a soft glow. It would never amaze cease to amaze her the words this man could pull out of thin air at the scariest moments. But now, with no words and no view of his brilliant blue eyes shining back at her, she can't seem to find the strength his words had given her just a few hours ago.

"Wake up," she wants to tell him. "Come back to me again." But he shows no signs of consciousness. And she knows that sleep is best.

She isn't sure how he did it; how he survived after her shooting without constant reassurance that she wasn't dead. He has told her to not feel guilty anymore, to let it go and drink up where they are now, but after this she truly sees what it must have been like, and she marvels at his strength as the first tear of the day slips from over the bottom lid of her eye.

She had wanted to cry when he fell out of her car, stumbling and passing out on the front lawn, closer to death than life. She had run to him, yelling in fear, in that moment disregarding where she was and who could hear her. She thanks her instincts for kicking in soon afterwards, her anger driving her towards the eventual capture of Parker.

She had wanted to cry when they first injected him with the anecdote, and he didn't wake. She knew it didn't work like that, knew the medicine would need time to work in his body, but still she wanted to reach down and shake him back to her.

She had wanted to cry when Martha and Alexis had come through the hospital doors, eyes wide with fear of the imagination, fear that would not be quenched until Kate mustered up the energy to give them the back story of why the most important man in all of their lives was currently lying unconscious on a hospital bed.

She does not think that the lump in her throat went away through all of that, but the tears she had managed to keep below the surface. Now though, the lump is returning like a gumball pressed against her trachea, obstructing her ability to breathe and she can feel the tension rising. She is usually so good at keeping the tension at bay, a master of her feelings. But she can feel the level inching ever closer to the point of breaking, to the point of no return, where emotions will spill this way and that, her mind will buzz and fray, and she will be unable to keep her body this still.

Her hands begin to shake and the tears begin to follow one another, down her cheeks, past her nose, over her lips and onto his hand. As everything begins to grip her, she remembers once more why they call it an "attack". She remembers how she hasn't cried in so long, even through all of those nights without him. Dr. Burke speaks to her in her head, reminding her once more that it is not beneficial to keep burying things deeper. And he was right, of course, this she can see now that everything is leaking out of her without control.

He moans. She almost misses it, she's so wrapped up in trying to keep still and quiet. His hand suddenly grips hers back and she gasps, the fight for air now more real than ever before.

"Mmmy- my hand's all wet," he mumbles out, and it's only then that she realizes that she has been silently dropping tears all over the hand she was kissing. Her fingers clumsily begin to wipe the wetness away, clean him up before he really gets his bearings, but he knows, and his eyes blink open at her telltale sniffle.

"Why's my ha-…. Kate?"

Oh and it's all in his eyes, his beautiful beautiful eyes, all of the reassurance that she so needed.

"_Hi_." It's a low murmur into the back of his hand and she has to chuckle at how bemused he looks by the word.

She feels his impressively strong tug on her hand then as he brings it to his mouth for a return kiss, and the press of his soft lips on her flesh brings her back.

She doesn't understand how he does that, how he brings her back when she's on the brink, how he takes her and places her back into a calmer zone with such simple actions, such flowing words.

He removes his lips from her hand, but to her surprise he doesn't give her hand back, but rather keeps tugging her hand closer to him. It isn't hard to catch his drift.

"Rick…" Her voice isn't full of conviction and she knows it. She wants to be closer to him, she really does, but it just isn't the time. "Later. When you're… better."

"Kate… come on. I'm doing just fine. Feeling much better, promise."

He tugs again, and she is surprised at the strength behind it when the force nearly knocks her forward out of her chair. They stay like that for a moment, eyes locked and neither yet willing to give in.

"_Beckett." _The tone of his voice shocks her, demanding and serious, and her last name is the last thing she expected to come from his mouth. She hasn't heard it much from his mouth lately, since they stopped working professionally together and it lost its original use. It hits her hard, brings her back to their first years, when that was all that he was allowed to call her and as close as he was allowed to get. It brings her through so many memories, so many victories, and so many near death experiences. This man has brought her through so much.

She slowly disentangles her limbs from the legs of her chair and slides down off of it, her weight hitting her feet hard, her body so heavy. She crawls into the space next to him then, never before so glad for the way his money can pay for silly things like a private hospital room and a reasonably sized bed. He scooches over towards the other side of the mattress to make room for her long legs, but she doesn't need it. She curls herself into him as best as she can, her head at his shoulder, her arms hugging the side of his torso to hers, her legs nestling up against the side of his own.

She brings a hand up to his neck and uses the leverage to inch her way slightly higher, so that her head cuddles into his neck.

"Don't say you're sorry again."

She huffs out a small breath, half chuckle and half indignance, so in love with how well he knows her.

"Okay." That is her only reply.

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Thanks for reading(: Review?


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